Customizing Controls/Modifying an .ini?

[drewkare]

I'm a member of another forum where MANY jukebox programs are tested/refined.

Here's a link to my posting of your software:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.p ... 03.40.html

What I'm wondering, and what will make your software attractive to others looking to build a jukebox, is if the controls are customizable. Obviously having to buy buttons or controls to take the place of a keyboard will get extremely cumbersome, and I'd like to NOT have to use a keyboard to select music.

I've seen mention of working command line, but I was wondering if there's an ini file somewhere that can be tinkered with to customize the controls.

Is there a possibility of this being able to be controlled with a relatively small number of controls? I'm thinking 2-4 directional buttons and a 10-key controller.

Any answers to the cusomization or ini editing possibilities are appreciated.

[Service-Team]

drewkare wrote:
> (...) What I'm wondering, and what will make your
> software attractive to others looking to build a
> jukebox, is if the controls are customizable.

If you mean the look and feel of the jukebox (the skin), yes, it is fully customizable. Although there are currently no alternative skins, a description is found here:

http://www.silverjuke.net/sdk/skin-howto.html

If you mean the type of "hardware" input controls; currently Silverjuke supports the mouse, the keyboard and so-called multimedia-keyboards with additional controls for pause, play etc. The shortcuts for the keyboard (and more) are also fully customizable using "Settings/Basic settings/Further options" (scroll down the list). Maybe this will already fit your needs.

> Obviously having to buy buttons or controls to
> take the place of a keyboard will get extremely
> cumbersome, and I'd like to NOT have to use a
> keyboard to select music.

I do not exactly understand what you mean; see above for the keyboard handling.

> I've seen mention of working command line, but I
> was wondering if there's an ini file somewhere
> that can be tinkered with to customize the
> controls.

By default, Silverjuke do not use an INI-file but the registry.

However, some users prefer using INI-files as an alternative to the registry. Currently, there are only few options to edit "by hand" - most things can be edited by the "settings" dialog in Silverjuke.

The registry or INI-files has nothing to do with skins.

> Is there a possibility of this being able to be
> controlled with a relatively small number of
> controls? I'm thinking 2-4 directional buttons
> and a 10-key controller.

See the remark about the keyboard above. However, in which way do you want the keys? Maybe we have to add some additional features.

So far, thank you for your interest - any further comments are welcome.

[drewkare]

For controls, this is kinda what I was talking about:

index.jpg (91.9 KiB) Viewed 13148 times

Something with a minimal amount of controls. We have a bunch of folks who have juke projects going, and our whole purpose is to avoid having them look like there's a computer in there if at all possible, and the keyboard just takes away from that.

Hopefully the picture makes it more clear =)

I'll give the skins a go and see how that turns out as well.

[Service-Team]

Okay - but how do you expect Silverjuke to interact with these hardware controls? Maybe, we can add an interface or a module to fit your needs.

[drewkare]

I've been puttering around with other stuff :/

It would interface with those controls either through a keyboard hack (using a keyboard matrix), a KeyWiz, or some flavor of iPac (all can be found amongst that link of the forum I posted above)

I just was refreshing some things and noticed your new "old-style" skin and it reminded me I never re-checked on the question I was asking!

I'm not sure about your "advertising", but that forum seems to be jumping up in jukebox making, and in the past has spawned yet another juke forum that ISN'T doing near as well as that one. Not a plug, just trying to help you get your product in front of as many people who might use it as possible.

Thanks for your time :)

[Service-Team]

drewkare wrote:
> (...) It would interface with those controls either
> through a keyboard hack (using a keyboard
> matrix), a KeyWiz, or some flavor of iPac (...)

I think, we have to add the following changes to Silverjuke:

- Assigning a unique number to each track which is (optionally) shown instead of the normal track number

- Reacting eg. to the Keys "0"-"9" and to "<" and ">" (customizable). If a sequence of the "0"-"9" keys identify a unique track number, this track is played; the keys "<" and ">" will scroll horizontally one page.

If we implement these changes, can the controllers you mentioned above (KeyWiz, iPac, ...) map the special hardware keys to the ones used in Silverjuke? And is this a comfortable and usual way interacting with such hardware devices?

[drewkare]

Service-Team wrote:
> I think, we have to add the following changes to
> Silverjuke:
>
> - Assigning a unique number to each track which is
> (optionally) shown instead of the normal track
> number
>
> - Reacting eg. to the Keys "0"-"9" and to "<"
> and ">" (customizable). If a sequence of the
> "0"-"9" keys identify a unique track number, this
> track is played; the keys "<" and ">" will
> scroll horizontally one page.
>
> If we implement these changes, can the controllers
> you mentioned above (KeyWiz, iPac, ...) map the
> special hardware keys to the ones used in
> Silverjuke? And is this a comfortable and usual
> way interacting with such hardware devices?


If the unique numbers go beyond 10, something will have to be done to work around that (I'm referring to the 2 numbers required to input the track number beyond 9).

If that can be done, then any of the keyboard interface devices I listed can be used.

Also, to page vertically, can up and down keyboard inputs be implemented in lieu of a mouse scroll down/up, or are those already the default control? I've got a few old-time discs that have upwards of 20+ songs, and doing away with the mouse in kiosk mode is desired.

[Service-Team]

drewkare schrieb:
> If the unique numbers go beyond 10, something will
> have to be done to work around that (I'm
> referring to the 2 numbers required to input the
> track number beyond 9).

My current idea is, to add the unique number to the tracks independently of which albums are in view. So if your music library contains 5000 tracks, you will have unique numbers with four digits: 0001, 0002, 0003, ... 0010, 0011, 0002, ... 4999, 5000.

A track is recognized for playback if all digits of an unique number are pressed. With some more intelligent numbering algorithm it should also be possible to cancel erroneous input sequences.

Moreover, this method should also work if there are less than 10 keys available for entering the unique numbers - in these cases we have to use another radix (eg. octal), which, however, is transparent to the user.

> If that can be done, then any of the keyboard
> interface devices I listed can be used.

Okay.

> Also, to page vertically, can up and down keyboard
> inputs be implemented in lieu of a mouse scroll
> down/up, or are those already the default
> control? I've got a few old-time discs that
> have upwards of 20+ songs, and doing away with
> the mouse in kiosk mode is desired.

Okay, two more keys for up/down - currently the PageUp and PageDown keys do this job.

Another idea: Alternatively, if there are not so many keys present in the input device, just one for down and the left/right keys reset the vertical scrolling.

drewkare, thank you for your tips so far - I'm looking forward for your response.

[drewkare]

"My current idea is, to add the unique number to the tracks independently of which albums are in view. So if your music library contains 5000 tracks, you will have unique numbers with four digits: 0001, 0002, 0003, ... 0010, 0011, 0002,> ... 4999, 5000."

I currently have spoken to someone looking for that specific type of implementation of ANY juke software, however, if there is a way to offer that as an option in addition to tying the first 2 numbers to a specific album, that would work better.

The reason being in kiosk, if a person enters the first two digits incorrectly, they may be playing a song they never intended to select. In essence, it would work as CD-style jukeboxes currently work...first two digits correspond to an album, second two digits correspond to a specific song on the album.

===================================

"Okay, two more keys for up/down - currently the PageUp and PageDown keys do this job.

Another idea: Alternatively, if there are not so many keys present in the input device, just one for down and the left/right keys reset the vertical scrolling."

THAT would be an excellent item to implement! Less keys often means MORE confusion, but the instant the left/right key would be pressed, it would be recognized as to what was going on.

[Service-Team]

A beta-version with the features described above will be available the next days.